Jacob Zuma, in full Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (born April 12, 1942, Nkandla, South Africa) politician who became president of South Africa in 2009. Prior to that he served as the country’s deputy president (1999–2005), and he has served as president of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), since 2007.

Newly elected African National Congress president Jacob Zuma addressing delegates during the …

Jerome Delay/AP

Role in the ANC’s fight against apartheid

Zuma received no formal schooling. He joined the ANC in 1959 and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), in 1962. He was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on Robben Island for conspiring to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid government. After his release, he set up underground networks to recruit for Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1975 Zuma fled the country to escape arrest. For more than a decade, he continued to work for the ANC while based in neighbouring countries—first in Swaziland and then in Mozambique. He became a member of the ANC’s national executive committee in 1977. After the government of South Africa exerted pressure on that of Mozambique, Zuma was forced to leave the latter country in 1987. He then went to ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, where he served as head of underground structures (organizational units) and head of the intelligence department.

When the South African government’s ban on the ANC was lifted in 1990, Zuma returned to the country and was elected chairperson of the southern Natal region. He became ANC deputy general secretary in 1991, and in 1994 he became a member of the executive committee for economic affairs and tourism in the newly created province of KwaZulu-Natal. In December 1997 he was elected deputy president of the ANC, and in June 1999 he was appointed deputy president of the country by Pres. Thabo Mbeki.

Legal challenges and conflict with Mbeki

Zuma was widely expected to eventually succeed Mbeki as president of the ANC and as president of the country. In June 2005, however, Mbeki dismissed him after the fraud and corruption conviction of one of Zuma’s close colleagues, businessman Schabir Shaik. The judge in that case found that there was a generally corrupt relationship between Shaik and Zuma, who was subsequently charged with two counts of corruption. Zuma initially recused himself from all ANC activities, but the ANC national general council defied Mbeki by reinstating him as an active member and, eventually, as ANC deputy president. In March 2006, with the corruption charges still pending, Zuma faced trial on a rape charge, of which he was acquitted in May. In September a Durban court struck the corruption case from the roll, stating that the state’s case was not adequate.

Despite the repeated allegations of wrongdoing—which his many supporters claimed were politically motivated—Zuma remained a popular figure within the ANC. At the party’s conference in December 2007, he was selected over Mbeki to be party president in what proved to be one of the most contentious leadership battles in the ANC’s history. Later that month, Zuma was recharged with corruption and fraud, and additional charges of money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion were brought against him. These charges were eventually dismissed on a legal technicality in September 2008; prosecutors from the National Prosecuting Agency (NPA) vowed to appeal the ruling, angering many in the ANC. In addition, the presiding judge said there was evidence of political interference by Mbeki or his supporters in Zuma’s prosecution, which ignited even more controversy within the party. Although Mbeki vehemently denied the allegations, a week later the ANC asked him to resign as president of South Africa, which he agreed to do.

Although Zuma was widely expected to be chosen as the country’s next president in the 2009 election, he was not eligible to serve as interim president, who under the terms of the constitution had to be a member of the National Assembly. Zuma ally Kgalema Motlanthe was the ANC’s candidate for the position, and he was the overwhelming winner in a vote held by the National Assembly in late September 2008.

In the weeks leading up to the 2009 general election, the corruption charges against Zuma and the allegations of political interference were once again in the spotlight, culminating with an announcement by the NPA on April 6, 2009, that the charges would be withdrawn. Although prosecutors stated they felt the corruption charges had merit, they noted evidence of misconduct in the handling of Zuma’s case and cited taped phone conversations that had recently come to light between the former head of the NPA and the former head of the Scorpions, an investigative unit that was attached to the NPA before being disbanded in 2009. The taped conversations included discussion of the timing of the reinstatement of charges against Zuma shortly after he was named president of the ANC in late 2007. Opposition parties decried the withdrawal of the charges, claiming that the NPA bowed to pressure from the ANC to drop the charges before the election and that the question of Zuma’s innocence was still unresolved. Nevertheless, the ANC performed strongly in the general election held on April 22, 2009, finishing far ahead of the other parties, and Zuma was poised to become the country’s next president. He was officially elected to the presidency in a National Assembly vote, held on May 6; he was inaugurated on May 9.

Zuma adheres to many traditional Zulu customs, including polygamy (more precisely, polygyny). This has endeared him to some segments of the population but has also been a source of criticism from others, who find some customs to be at odds with what they consider to be modern societal norms. Other aspects of his personal life were also subject to criticism: in early February 2010 there were allegations that Zuma had fathered a child out of wedlock, something frowned upon in traditional Zulu culture; Zuma admitted that he had. As the controversy surrounding this incident continued to grow—critics claimed, among other things, that his behaviour showed a blatant disregard for the country’s HIV/AIDS policies—he apologized for the distress that his actions had brought to his family, the ANC, and the South African population.

During his term as president, Zuma was involved in continental affairs, taking a role in mediation efforts to resolve crises in Africa on behalf of the Southern African Development Community or African Union, including those in Zimbabwe, Libya, and Côte d’Ivoire. At home, although there had been some progress made by the government’s antipoverty initiatives, he faced simmering discontent over the economic inequality still present in the country. He also continued to face allegations of corruption, which included the reemergence of older charges: in March 2012 the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered a review by the Pretoria High Court of the 2009 decision by state prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Zuma. In spite of those troubles, Zuma was overwhelmingly reelected as president of the ANC at the party’s conference held in December 2012.

Zuma continued to be affected by allegations of corrupt or unethical behaviour in the following years. One such example was the controversy generated by the misuse of government resources that occurred when the Guptas, a wealthy business family with whom he had very close ties, were allowed to land a private plane at a high-security government air base as they transported guests to a family wedding in 2013. Zuma denied having anything to do with that, and one government investigation cleared him of having been involved, but widespread criticism over the event remained. He also had to deal with allegations of impropriety regarding extensive state-funded upgrades—ostensibly for security reasons—to his private homestead at Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal. Discussions regarding the questionable upgrades first surfaced in late 2009 but gathered steam in the following years and came to a head when Thuli Madonsela, the country’s public protector (the national ombudsman), released an official report in March 2014 that detailed the findings of a two-year investigation. It concluded that many of the publicly funded improvements made to Zuma’s homestead—such as a swimming pool, an amphitheatre, and a cattle kraal—were not security-related. Zuma was found to have “benefited unduly” from the improvements and was called upon to repay a percentage of the costs of the non-security upgrades.

The economic problems and cloud of corruption did not detract a significant amount of support from the ANC, which managed to do well in the 2014 elections and virtually guaranteed Zuma a second term as president. He was officially reelected to the post by the National Assembly on May 21 and sworn in on May 24.

Nkandla continued to haunt Zuma. Two opposition parties brought a case regarding repayment to the Constitutional Court, which in March 2016 unanimously ruled that the public protector’s findings were binding and that Zuma’s disregard of the public protector’s findings and recommendation to repay the money was a failure to “uphold, defend and respect” the Constitution and ordered him to repay the state for some of the upgrades. Earlier that month, his relationship with the Gupta family had made news again, over allegations that the family had promised government portfolios to some individuals. In early April Zuma survived an impeachment motion in the ANC-dominated National Assembly, but many, including some senior ANC members, were weary of Zuma’s scandals and called for him to step down or be recalled. Later that month, Zuma was once again the centre of negative attention, with a High Court ruling that said the 2009 decision by state prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Zuma was not rational and should be reviewed and set aside. Faced with the prospect of having more than 700 corruption charges reinstated against him, Zuma petitioned the Supreme Court to be allowed to appeal the High Court’s decision; separately, the NPA also petitioned the Constitutional Court to be allowed to appeal the decision. In September the Constitutional Court denied the NPA’s request to appeal, and in October the Supreme Court allowed Zuma’s legal team to argue why they should be allowed to state his case.

Meanwhile, the ongoing scandals and allegations of corruption associated with Zuma, as well as dissatisfaction with the performance of the ANC-led governments at all levels, took a toll on support for the party. In what was widely seen as a referendum on Zuma and the ANC, the August 2016 municipal elections, the party took the smallest percentage of the total vote since it took power in 1994, garnering less than 60 percent.

In mid-October 2016, Madonsela, in one of her last acts before stepping down as public protector, was due to release a report of her office’s investigation into allegations that members of the Gupta family had wielded undue political influence on Zuma and other government officials. Zuma went to court to delay the report’s release, but on November 2 he withdrew his challenge, and the report was released later that day. Although it detailed several instances of possible undue influence and recommended that a judicial inquiry team be established to further investigate the allegations mentioned in the report, it did not accuse Zuma of having committed any crimes. On the heels of the report’s release, a vote of no confidence against Zuma was held in the National Assembly, but it failed.